Shipping Policy

My legendary tea arrives from all over the world, sourced from some of the finest tea fields in the world through the Ethical Tea Program (from 3Teas and MetroTeas), so it usually takes from one to three weeks to arrive. If you’re considering getting someone tea for a holiday with a deadline and you’re less than a month away, I’d probably just get them a gift card so they can pick their own.

There’s a bigger story when it comes to shipping, though.

I know you don’t want to harm shipping workers. And whether or not you believe the alleged cases of heart attacks and passing out from exhaustion at Amazon, there’s no debating that a study in New Jersey found extremely high warehouse turnover, almost double that of other warehouses. As I understand it, this is largely due to the human costs of maintaining deadlines caused by the Prime business model.

This bothers me. In my personal life, I’ve quit Prime; even when I really can’t find something I need anywhere but Amazon, I’d just prefer to skip that speedy shipping subscription to know I’m not hurting people with “revolutionary” shipping.

And I’m taking the same approach with Tingles Tea: I currently use Canadian Post and USPS, with tracking options. I realize you might balk when this causes shipping in the US and Canada to range from $7.64 to $16.81. But that’s because that’s actually honest international pricing, not pricing hidden in bulk sales costs and volume like Amazon does. I did briefly experiment with hiding the cost of shipping in the tea price to make shipping look “free.” But that didn’t make you happier, and I’m not sure it was entirely honest. I think it’s important that we, the consumers, realize how much things should actually cost.

But I also want to actually get you this tea.

So in order to balance out the shipping and get you these healthy, high quality leaves, I’ve settled on pricing the tea itself lower than it’s really worth. (My supplier actually keeps telling me to raise prices) This means your total order for one tea should be about what I would have paid for a fancy tea in Korea: about $20-$25 per container. Your overall order will still always come out to less than if you bought the same number of cups of tea brewed at Starbucks day after day (at about $4 a cup!).

This means that the more tea you buy in one order, the better value you’re getting on shipping and total price–so instead of $40 for two fancy teas, you can probably swing the same for $25. That’s another reason I decided not to hide shipping price in the tea price: it just made the individual orders far too expensive for what, a psychological edge?

I’ve also priced a free shipping option when you order more than $75 of tea in the US and Canada.

Finally, I’m always on the look-out for other ethical suppliers so I can decrease these costs for you overall. I desperately want this thing to be good for you, good for the world, and eventually, good for me, too.